1. Field Of The Invention
The present invention relates to an electro-photographic recording apparatus such as a printer and, more particularly, to a recording apparatus which stores recording conditions such as recording number, density, and magnification (to be referred to as "recording conditions") when a power source is turned off, and resets the stored recording conditions when the power source is turned on again.
2. Description Of The Prior Art
Recently, safety standards in various countries (such as UL, CSA, and IEC) have become more strict, and a demand has arisen for a safe mechanical structure by which a user does not touch powered electrical components, live wires, and the like. On the other hand, because of tendencies toward image maintenance and mono coloring of a copying machine, units in a machine must be easily detachable by a user. Since most of the units have electrical components therein, electrical contacts (connectors) are exposed when the units are detached. A structure by which the user never touches electrical components, even when the unit is detached, is preferred to satisfy the safety standards, although it is structurally difficult and requires much cost. Therefore, some copying machines have a structure in which a power source is turned off when a door of the machine is opened. However, when the power source of the machine is turned off, all the recording conditions at that time are cleared. In order to continue the copying operation thereafter, the user must turn on the power source and reset all the recording conditions, resulting in a cumbersome operation. For this reason, some newly developed copying machines store recording conditions in a nonvolatile memory or a battery back up memory when a door is opened to turn off a power source, and reset the stored recording conditions when the power source is turned on again.
In copying machines of this type, a main switch and a door switch are independently provided as power source switches, and when either of these switches is turned off, recording conditions immediately before that are stored and are reset when the power source is turned on again.
For example, when a door is opened to remove a jammed sheet of paper, a power source is turned off, and when the door is closed after removing the sheet, the power source is turned on to reset the recording conditions immediately before the door was opened. Therefore, the recording conditions conveniently need not be set again.
However, in this case, when a copying operation is to be performed after a long period of time since a previous copying operation is completed and a power source is turned off, the recording conditions for the previous copying operation are reset when the power source is turned on. Therefore, an operator must initialize or set desired conditions every time the power source is turned on, and this cumbersome setting operation leads to poor operability.